| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: uttered a faint protest.
"But you know Jack did try to take him about, and he was
impossible."
"Oh, hang it--because he's fat and shiny, and has a sloppy
manner! Well, all I can say is that the people who are clever
enough to be civil to him now will make a mighty good thing of
it. A few years from now he'll be in it whether we want him or
not, and then he won't be giving away a half-a-million tip for a
dinner."
Lily's mind had reverted from the intrusive personality of Mr.
Rosedale to the train of thought set in motion by Trenor's first
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: hog-chains parted with a clang like the boom of a big bell. Then
another! ... Then the captain bade his men to cut away all her
upper works, clean to the deck. Overboard into the seething went
her stacks, her pilot-house, her cabins,--and whirled away. And
the naked hull of the Star, still dragging her three anchors,
labored on through the darkness, nearer and nearer to the immense
silhouette of the hotel, whose hundred windows were now all
aflame. The vast timber building seemed to defy the storm. The
wind, roaring round its broad verandas,--hissing through every
crevice with the sound and force of steam,--appeared to waste its
rage. And in the half-lull between two terrible gusts there came
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: congregation; and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in
that church, and which may even be heard half a mile off, quite
to the opposite side of the mill-pond, on a still Sunday morning,
which are said to be legitimately descended from the nose of
Ichabod Crane. Thus, by divers little makeshifts, in that
ingenious way which is commonly denominated "by hook and by
crook," the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was
thought, by all who understood nothing of the labor of headwork,
to have a wonderfully easy life of it.
The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in
the female circle of a rural neighborhood; being considered a
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
